broadening the horizons


I seem to have entered another season of change where the comfortable places are beginning to feel a bit constricted.

It's not that unusual... I tend to get restless when things stay the same for too long. Maybe it is because moving has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was 36 years old, I counted up how many times I had moved in my life. It was a rather daunting 39!

My mother used to see our homes as challenges, and she'd knock down walls and put up wallpaper on whatever was left. Carpets and curtains were changed... and just when it was exactly as she liked it, my dad would say "we'd probably get a good price for this place..." and we'd be on the move again.

Add the fact that his work meant we moved town pretty often ... he'd whip a branch of his company into shape and then be moved on to the next one.

Greg has been working with me for a month now, and we are getting used to working in the same office space. For the first 10 days or so he worked in the dining room and left me to the study, but then I went out for the day and came back to find that he had rearranged and organised the space in a way that worked very much better. 

If he'd asked me if he should or could I'd have responded with a very emphatic "don't touch my stuff!" But actually it has worked out very well.

We now sit opposite each other and chat on skype, and that works well too.

But this is where I'm hoping we'll be for a couple of days a week anyway. 


I feel like the horizons are broadening, like the possibilities are endless.

Comments

Skoorby said…
I've had moments like these too, and they're wonderful! Blossoming optimism, backed by an emerging reality - a great combination. Nice new masthead to go with it too.
2 May 2010 at 18:15
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the writer formerly known as...

Twenty years after I was born a Brooks, I became a Wilson in one of those happy-ever-after fantasies that didn't quite work out the way I had planned. But Wilson was a nice name, and eminently preferable to Brooks (which in Afrikaans means underpants or knickers and led to horrible teasing at school) and I quite enjoyed it. It was one of those anonymous names that everyone could spell and I liked the fact that it was totally normal at first look, but had a secret history. The great grandfather of the Mr Wilson I married had emigrated from somewhere near Moscow to the US and like so many others with unpronouncable or "difficult" names (I think it was Tobinofsky) he was given another one. One of the legends is that Wilson was chosen from the phone book, another is that he particularly admired a Wilson (couldn't have been Harold). So, for the next 25 years or so, I built my name and reputation as the journalist Lynne Wilson ... until I met and married my new happy-ever-a...
Read more

mind the gap

I'm suffering from an excess of velleity. Velleity is volition at its weakest. It's a mere wish or inclination, without any accompanying effort. My velleity is fed by an overactive imagination... I can see in my mind's eye exactly what my dream garden looks like, for example. So when I am outside, I'm imagining a tree there, a shrub here, a winding path and a bank of flowers. so the lack of all those things and the lack of effort on my part to make them happen don't worry me so much. It certainly makes things easier when you are living with a very large garden during our excessively hot and dry summers. I'd write more... but what can I say? Velleity strikes again.
Read more

happy birthday to "the Arch!"

Image
tenacity and hope in the most unhospitable of places " I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ"   I often think of Ghandi's famous words (even if it is not completely clear that it was actually he who said them) and use them as a measure and a reminder for the way that I try to live my life. I use them as a measure for other people too. For me, professing to be a Christian means that you have voluntarily set the bar that measures your behaviour, your reactions and the way that you live your life, every moment of the day. (Even when no one is watching). It is a particular joy to come across an individual who actually practices what he preaches. Someone who, like Paul, could say "Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ". For me,  Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu who turns 79 today, epitomises that example He is the elder statesman of South Africa and has been described as the conscience ...
Read more